Moore’s law is increasingly difficult to maintain. With the economics of transistor scaling no longer universally applicable, the industry is turning to innovative packaging technologies to support system scaling demands and achieve lower system cost. This has led to the system technology co-optimization concept, where an SoC type system is disaggregated, or partitioned, into smaller modules (also known as chiplets) that can be asynchronously designed by dispersed teams and then combined into a larger, highly flexible system using a heterogeneously integrated, chiplet-based package design, which may involve 3D packaging.
With this greater flexibility comes several additional challenges in the form of power integrity, signal integrity, thermal performance, warp, and mechanical stress. Finding and having to fix such issues late in the design cycle becomes exorbitantly expensive. This paper proposes a shift-left approach in which analysis is performed very early, and the results are used to drive design decisions as well as make corrections to mitigate the risk of verification failures later in the design flow. Early analysis in complex high-density advanced packaging (HDAP) flows enables designers to spot potential issues early to avoid built-in constructs that cause design failures and require major redesign work. This proactive approach helps streamline the design process and minimizes the need for multiple design iterations.
While verification analysis of a completed design can offer very accurate results, it is way too late in the process to provide value. The shift-left approach entails applying multi-physics analysis very early in the design process: at the prototyping and design planning stage where very little is known about the design. We will show how a minimum of input still provides enough detail to drive a left shift process. This paper focuses on power and signal integrity prototyping in system technology co-optimization high-density advanced packaging, but the approach applies equally to thermal, warp, and mechanical stress.
